Europe Attracts the Wrong Kind of Immigrants
From the desk of The Brussels Journal on Sat, 2005-08-06 22:46
A quote from Richard Posner on The Becker-Posner
Blog, 31 July 2005
The assimilation of immigrants by the United States, compared to the inability of the European nations to assimilate them - with potentially catastrophic results for those nations - is not unrelated to the differences between economic regulation in the United States and Europe. Because the U.S. does not have a generous safety net - because it is still a nation in which the risk of economic failure is significant - it tends to attract immigrants who have values conducive to upward economic mobility, including a willingness to conform to the customs and attitudes of their new country.
The assimilation of immigrants by the United States, compared to the inability of the European nations to assimilate them - with potentially catastrophic results for those nations - is not unrelated to the differences between economic regulation in the United States and Europe. Because the U.S. does not have a generous safety net - because it is still a nation in which the risk of economic failure is significant - it tends to attract immigrants who have values conducive to upward economic mobility, including a willingness to conform to the customs and attitudes of their new country.